Friday, September 15, 2017

Weekend Art Challenge 091517—ReneAigner

Click
through to see the illustration and design requirements for your single
card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants
feedback, which you may use to revise your submission any number of
times. I will aim to review the most recent submission from each
designer.

This is powerful. On average, it has "{2}, {T}: Loot" which is huge on a land because you can use it every turn without overhead and your opponent probably can't interact with it. Occasionally, this will frustrate players when it fails, but drawing 2 cards off a land and then having the chance to do that again is huge. And then you put this in a madness/delirium/reanimator deck and it's just disgusting.

I was thinking this probably needs to cost red mana, since it is a red ability with a red drawback, and doing that would also reduce the number of decks you can freely put this into. Is it enough to make this printable? I'm not sure it is, but that's a step in the right direction.

Yeah, 2R seems like a much better place to start at development wise. Similar to Desolate Lighthouse then. 2 is definitely too low! I don't want Spikes to play the card cause it's efficient/powerful - they would probably complain about the extra RNG. Though that would be an interesting study as well - being able to blame things when you lose feels great too. Probably the audience is people who want to flip coins, and do it every turn!

I also considered "pay life, flip coin, double life" re: Tavern Swindler, but that seemed too thumb twiddly do nothing? And of course less novel.

This is better than Tarnished Citadel since it makes all your mana sources into a Tarnished Citadel. That said, it may still be balanced. I'd like to see what kinds of 5-color Limited strategies this enables at uncommon!

Tepid HavenLand -UAdd C to your mana poolWhen ~ etb put a safe counter on it. Whenever a creature deals combat damage to you, remove a safe counter and prevent that damage. ~ taps for any color as long as it has a safe counter on it.

There's a definitely a neat idea here, but this card is doing two things, and that's one too many.

First, it's an uncommon City of Brass that costs no life. (And that's too strong.)Second, it prevents a little damage to you (and could prevent more if you proliferate).Both of those are useful, but tying them together steals focus from each without adding anything. It adds tension, but arbitrary tension isn't fun. Consider this:

Tepid HavenLand~ ETB with a safe counter on it.{T}: Add {C} to your mana pool.{T}, Remove a safe counter from ~: Prevent all damage target attacking creature would deal to you this turn. Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.

That card isn't any more thematic, but it layers on a chance for the player to defeat the tension by getting to use both bonuses rather than just one. That's still not as strong a design as if we just removed the "add any color" bit, because then our card is focused both thematically and mechanically.

Cool! I ended up with something very similar. Personally I think the "equip costs" clause is not needed, let alone "targeting humans"-- the flavor is strong enough already and adding a tribal element just distracts.

I like this design space. Making {2} is always dangerous, and might be a deal-breaker, but if it can work, making equipment should be one of the safer uses (since most equipment doesn't do anything by itself, and making a lot of equipment is a weak plan).

Being able to make {W} might be a touch too useful for a land that can also make {C}{C}. Probably just produce {C} normally.

Definitely remove "targeting humans" because this is an equipment-matters land and that's plenty specific.

I like the idea that a treasure can buy you something you'd have to pay through the nose for otherwise, but this card is just vastly cleaner without the middle ability. This is a lovely treasure-reward:

Inn of Ill-ReputeLand (rare){T}: Add {C} to your mana pool.{T}, Sacrifice a Treasure: Create a 2/2 black Pirate creature token with menace. Activate this ability only as a sorcery.

Midnight SafehouseLand (r)Hideaway (This land enters the battlefield tapped. When it does, look at the top four cards of your library, exile one face down, then put the rest on the bottom of your library.)T: Add <> to your mana pool.T, Reveal the exiled card: If you do, permanents that share a name with the revealed card have hexproof until end of turn.

Hideaway was slightly awkward in practice but a lovely bit of value for jumping through a reasonable hoop, so I'd be happy to see 1-5 more hideaway lands sometime.This is a fun and clever use of the tech. If Safehouse can grant hexproof more than once, it needs to cost mana. I'm inclined to have it only do its thing once.

It's worth noting that because this pulls from the top of your library, choosing a creature card you don't already have in hand (seemingly) postpones drawing a copy of it to play, and that will often feel bad.

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We met as competitors and collaborators in the second Great Designer Search. After the contest was over, we decided we still had things to say about designing Magic: the Gathering. So we started a blog.